Canadian Entertainment Giant Makes A Play For The Middle East

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has solidified its status as a leading themed entertainment hub by opening the first site outside North America of Activate, the hit Canadian chain of activity centers which feature cutting-edge versions of the kind of games found in Disney’s futuristic Epcot park in Florida.

The venue in the glitzy city of Dubai is formed from a series of nine darkened rooms, each containing different activities which make players feel like they have stepped into a video game or a spy film. The rooms seem to have been made for social media as they are filled with eye-catching brightly-colored lights, LED screens and lasers.

One looks like a scene from Mission: Impossible and sees visitors making their way from one end of the room to the other, gingerly avoiding 180 laser beams blocking their path. Put even a finger in their way and it’s game over.

One of the most high-tech attractions is like a live version of Space Invaders as players face a wall of LED screens showing digital asteroids heading towards them. Throwing balls at the screens causes them to bust into pieces and the more asteroids they break, the more points they score.

Anyone who has been on the Journey into Imagination ride at Epcot will instantly recognize the room containing a game called Push. One of the first things you’re faced with on exiting the ride at Epcot is a wall of long illuminated multi-colored oblong panels, like an oversized wall-mounted piano. The panels light up in a specific pattern and players then have to push them in that combination to proceed.

If the player succeeds, the patterns get increasingly longer, faster and more complex. It isn’t the only one of its kind at Epcot as it follows the format of a game set inside an arcade cabinet at the exit of Spaceship Earth, a slow-moving ride set inside the soaring silver sphere at the entrance to the park.

Similarly, the walls of Activate’s Push room are lined with touch-sensitive buttons illuminating in patterns which players then have to replicate. Like the other games, this too gets more difficult as players progress in order to test their memory as well as their speed and dexterity.

The main event is the viral sensation Mega Grid room which has had more than 30 million views on TikTok where it got the nickname ‘the floor-is-lava’. That’s because the floor in the room is covered with more than 500 touch-sensitive tiles which light up in different colors creating a path for players to follow or avoid. Leaping from one block of colored tiles to the next gives guests a good workout whilst making them feel like they are on an adventure with moustachioed plumber Mario.

“When we first launched on social media, we saw a high level of engagement with Activate experiences, especially from the Middle East,” says Adam Schmidt, founder and CEO of Activate Games. However, that’s only one of the reasons why he chose the Middle East for its first location outside North America.

A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba in central Canada, Schmidt is a highly-skilled entrepreneur. He started out working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police before founding The Real Escape Canada in October 2014 and then Activate three years later.

“Our journey into the gaming and entertainment space began when we first experienced an escape room. There weren’t a lot of entertainment options where we lived,” he says. “We took the lessons from that experience and developed one of the most successful escape rooms in Western Canada. While running that company, we saw an opportunity to innovate and expand on the idea, creating a replayable and continuously engaging concept. That’s how Activate was born.”

It justifiably bills itself as the world’s first active gaming facility and it has grown to more than 30 locations across Canada and the United States with 15 further sites due to open this year in North America as well as the one in Dubai.

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention and Activate is testimony to this. The bitterly-cold climate in Winnipeg explains the lack of entertainment opportunities there. The average high in July is 78.4 degrees and it gets down to a teeth-chattering average low of minus 21 degrees in January. As a result of this, indoor malls are at the heart of the community and in many Canadian cities they are directly connected to a network of tunnels which link everything from schools and universities to hotels, sports stadiums and railway stations. It means that visitors don’t need to set foot outside when it is inhospitable.

Although the climate in the Middle East is the antithesis of this, it has the same consequence as it is so hot in the summer that residents spend most of their time indoors. It explains why malls are central to cities in the Middle East too and, as we have reported, they aren’t just home to stores but also aquariums, museums, roller coasters, snow parks and even Disney-caliber night time shows which are free to watch.

It gives Activate a degree of familiarity with the market but it still needed a local partner and there was an obvious choice. As we have also reported, the region’s biggest mall manager Majid Al Futtaim has more in common with entertainment conglomerates like Disney and Universal than retail operators.

The core of its business involves running 27 malls as well as local retail franchises including LEGO, upscale US clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and Crate & Barrel, a high-end furniture retailer from Northbrook, Illinois. However, it has also been developing residential communities for longer than Disney and manages Hilton, Le Meridien, Sheraton and Westin hotels, some of which have movie-themed rooms. There is good reason for this.

Majid Al Futtaim distributes Universal and Warner Bros. movies in the Middle East, operates many of the theaters where they are shown and runs a studio making movies for the local region. Its mall in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, is home to one of only two outlets worldwide of Dreamscape, the cutting-edge virtual reality operator which was part-financed by Warner Bros., Fox, IMAX and Steven Spielberg‎.

Inside many of its other malls are lavish snow parks and Magic Planet entertainment complexes containing the latest arcade games, midway games, VR games, climbing walls, large-scale simulators and carousels for kids. Given this emphasis on themed facilities it is no coincidence that Majid Al Futtaim’s entertainment division is run by seasoned Disney parks veteran Ignace Lahoud.

One of the most sprawling Magic Planet sites sits in Dubai’s City Centre Mirdif mall and is accompanied by an iFLY facility which replicates the sensation of skydiving in towering clear cylinders. Earlier this week Activate swung open its doors there too.

“We were particularly impressed by Majid Al Futtaim Entertainment’s enthusiasm, experience, and commitment to bringing Activate to Dubai,” says Schmidt. His instinct paid off.

Thanks to the expertise of both parties, Activate’s Dubai site opened just ten months after the announcement of its partnership with Majid Al Futtaim. Even though Activate’s games in Dubai are the same as the ones in its North American sites, the expansion still wasn’t child’s play.

Schmidt says that the first step was “to adapt our proprietary products to meet international standards. This included rigorous testing to ensure compliance with both safety and technical regulations for international export.

“Given that different regions have varying electrical standards, we carefully reviewed and modified our systems to ensure seamless functionality with local electrical requirements. In addition, our software was revamped to support multiple languages, including Arabic, to enhance accessibility and offer a more localized experience for users in the UAE.”

To ensure that standards remain uniform in its rapidly-growing portfolio of properties, Schmidt founded Activate University and it came into its own when the expansion to the UAE was underway. He says that more than 100 people were involved with the expansion “providing on-the-ground operational support, with our teams traveling to the UAE to oversee product installation and deliver in-depth training.

“All products were manufactured in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and we revamped our logistics strategy to integrate this international expansion with our North American operations smoothly. Additionally, we brought the Dubai staff to Activate University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for specialized training, conducted rigorous testing and quality assurance, assisted with marketing and launch strategies and navigated the complexities of international shipping for the first time.” Schmidt isn’t stopping there.

Over the next five to 10 years, Activate plans to establish 70 venues in 10 countries, including 30 in the UK in partnership with specialist leisure operator We Do Play. Schmidt says the first will open in London at the start of 2025 and he “plans to open 40 new stores by the end of 2025.”

The timing is ideal as active and healthy pastimes, such as trampolining, padel and minigolf, are becoming increasingly popular. Schmidt could clearly see this coming as he made sure from the start that Activate could be easily iterated.

“The key development that led to Activate’s success was our vision for scalability,” he explains. “While running Western Canada’s most successful escape room, we encountered obstacles in expanding that concept. With Activate, we knew from the start that our new idea had to be designed for global expansion.

“We focused on creating a model that could easily be replicated in other markets, standardizing room designs and controlling manufacturing and production in-house. We aimed to develop world-class games and tournaments that could be seamlessly launched across all locations with the push of a button, ensuring a synchronized and exceptional player experience everywhere.” He achieved his objective.

As all of Activate’s rooms are the same it enables the company to keep a global scoreboard of the performance in each one. Players can compete against each other in the same room, or work co-operatively, in a bid to get on the global leaderboard. Each room caters for groups of two to five players and the games in them are suitable for anyone over the age of six which maximizes the potential audience.

Cleverly, Activate charges per hour of game time so the longer players spend trying to increase their score, the more they have to pay. There is even more to the games than meets the eye.

They have 100 levels of difficulty, ranging from easy to extreme and this doesn’t just involve them getting tougher but more complex too. One version of the laser room sees the players being given laser guns to shoot targets in the room whilst avoiding the beams. With other players in the room at the same time no two games are alike which increases replayability and keeps visitors streaming through the turnstiles.

“One of the most exciting aspects of Activate is that it allows for constant innovation – being an inventor at heart, it’s a platform to keep developing new content and sharing it globally,” says Schmidt. There is huge potential as his games are already a significant step up from the ones in Epcot which have been there for well over 15 years.

Schmidt declines to say when or where Activate’s next venues will appear in the Middle East though it is likely there will be more. Majid Al Futtaim has the exclusive license to them and Lahoud says they are a crucial part of diversifying its entertainment offering.

“The launch of the first Activate in the Middle East reaffirms our commitment at Majid Al Futtaim to deliver innovative and engaging entertainment experiences for our guests across the region. The unique blend of gaming, entertainment and physical activity complemented by cutting-edge technology offers something truly unique for friends and families looking to create great moments together.”

It also diversifies the mix of themed entertainment in the UAE itself which already includes many of the most beloved brands. It is home to the world’s leading indoor theme parks which are based on the Warner Bros. and Dreamworks movie studios as well as Marvel Comics. The latest addition to the roster is SeaWorld Abu Dhabi which is perhaps the world’s most innovative theme park as we reported. There is also a string of water parks lavishly-themed to a desert fort, an oasis and Aztec temples.

In just the past few days, leisure giant MGM Resorts announced that it is working on bringing a version of Las Vegas’ iconic Sphere to Dubai as part of a $2 billion development which will feature the brand’s three flagship hotel chains – MGM, Bellagio and Aria. It follows the development of the UAE’s first casino – the $4 billion Wynn Resort which is due to open in 2027 in the city of Ras Al Khaimah where the world’s only themed Hampton Inn is located as we have reported. The more traffic there is to the region, the greater the number of visitors Activate can expect so it has everything to play for.